Monthly Archives: November 2006

A Good Day

A perfect day. Except for the cold coming back with a vengeance and settling in my chest, that is.

I turned out 3,095 words in Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro, which is shaping up to be a novelette or novella and not a story at all. It stands at 5,281 words already.

I made beef stew, which has another half-hour to go in the slow cooker, and we’ll have it with the rest of the mashed potatoes seasoned with onion and sour cream that I made for feast following yesterday’s Samhain ritual.

I walked to the post office this morning to pick up a parcel from my mother, who sent me the two books she’d promised to lend me at Christmas, a selection of magazine clippings, and imported British chocolate bars as food for the soul now that the book has been handed in.

And on top of it all, I discovered that the set of speakers and subwoofer I’d been eyeing to replace those that died this weekend is on sale this week, at 50% off the regular price.

Yes, indeed. The day’s been a very good one.

So now it’s on to delicious stew, a soothing warm bath, and reading in bed for a while.

The Writing Soundtrack

Two problems.

One: I am astonished to discover that I have next to no Vivaldi recordings. I have the ubiquitous Four Seasons and an album of double concerti (for the double cello concerto, of course), and once upon a time there was also my beloved Il Giardino Armonico The Red Priest album that was enthusiastically lent to someone (who?) the week after I got it and subsequently lost track of it, but that seemed to be it until I remembered that all my cello CDs are on a different shelf. Still, there are only two more albums of cello concerti and sonatas there. Sounds like it’s time to invest in a couple of low-budget CDs of general instrumental stuff, and the Gloria, at the least. (Naxos, you are my friend.)

Two: The speakers I’ve been using for my computer have finally died. They died an honourable death, being the first set of high-quality speakers I received with my Discman back when I was seventeenish, so they’ve been in steady use for eighteen years or so. The only problem is that my sound card doesn’t have a speaker on it, so I’ve had to hunt out my big cushiony headphones and the cable extension to reach to the port on the back of the computer tower. Working with headphones is very odd. I’m not sure if I like it or not yet.

Rest

So here I am, at eight-thirty in the morning, a cup of tea at hand and the whole day ahead of me. HRH took Liam in to daycare this morning on his way into work and will pick him up again at the end of the day, leaving me the whole day with absolutely no responsibility. I’ve wandered through the house tidying up a bit, simply appreciating the feeling of not having to do anything right away.

Liam slept through the night, with no waking sounding as if he was a harbinger of the apocalypse. As a result he slept right through to 7.30, which wasn’t part of the plan: because his pattern has been wake around three-thirty for an hour/return to sleep/wake around five-thirty or six, we were relying on him to awaken early again. The sleep did everyone good, but it meant that we started the morning an hour and a half later than we expected to. Everyone was in such a good mood that it didn’t matter, though, and it was a gift for all three of us. It felt odd to kiss the boy goodbye and watch HRH bundle him into the car and drive away, when I’m usually the one corralling and transporting him, then running errands on the way home, writing immediately when I get in, and leaving just as I’m hitting my stride during my most productive time of the day in order to pick him up again.

I deserve this. I didn’t get the break I was hoping to have back at the beginning of August when the boy started part-time daycare, the break I needed after the sequence of “book interrupted by rush book/back to original book/early baby/finish original book/full-time baby/new book”. And I’m thankful to finally have this time, the time I need and have needed for so long, to rest in different ways and to reroot myself in life.

So naturally, now that I don’t have to, now that I have time to myself… I’m drifting here to write. It’s a different kind of writing, though; it’s relaxing, and feeds a different part of me. It’s restful writing.

To Bed

The new story, tentatively titled “Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro”, now stands at 2,186 words, which means I just wrote 1,286. This feels so wonderfully relaxed. I’m deeply enjoying writing for myself again.

I must stop because I have to get to bed, as the boy has been waking screaming around four in the morning — perhaps being so very little he senses the shifting Samhain energy even more than I do, poor thing, and needs some extra TLC to reassure him when he wakens (or, you know, it could be his teeth again, who can say?) — and I need as much rest as possible both to recover from the drain of the book and to catch up on what I didn’t get over the past three weeks. Besides, my characters have just sat in a circle to introduce themselves, so I need to figure out who the remaining seven are before I continue.

Good night, world. I’ll see you in the morning.

The Samhain Time of Year

Being away from the computer has been refreshing. I’d forgotten what it’s like to not have to sit down first thing in the morning, or log off late at night.

I began a new story on Friday night, struck by a lovely new idea for a YA historical set in early 18th century Venice, and got nine hundred words down plus three hours of research (you see, Sorceror, I am weak still) to give myself at least some kind of context. It feels marvellous to be able to respond to inspiration again, and indeed, to have inspiration at all, because it means that my brain is no longer swamped by the Large All-Consuming Project written to deadline. And, as I suspected, as of half an hour after I sent the MS in to the editor, I began to remember things I wanted to do that didn’t make it to my final list, and ways in which I could have made what’s already there more focused and to the point. I’ve been noting them down as they occur, and when I get it back for edits and rewrites I’ll add them in. I’m expecting some of them to come up in the copyeditor’s queries anyhow. It’s too easy to ascribe the new story idea to the rebound factor: I think it may have more to do with the whole decks-cleared feeling of the end of the year. Part of me wants to pick up Swan Sister again, and I will, except my creative spirit seems to want me to work through something new to get the gears meshing properly again before I do.

Speaking of the creative spirit, Jan and I met Friday afternoon to work on music, and band was terrific on Saturday. For those of you who are fans and have been asking when the next gig date is to be, I can now tell you to circle January 20 on your calendars, assuming you already have a 2007 calendar. Otherwise, write it on a sticky-note and put it on your fridge or something.

We had a lovely Samhain ritual today, and as always, it reminded my soul that it’s the end of the year, and that goes so very far to expaining how I’ve been feeling these past few weeks. No matter how clearly my intellectual brain remembers Ah, yes, the Samhain time of year, my spirit doesn’t get it until we’re actually in circle, and then everything slots into place: emotional shifts, sleep patterns, sensations of loss and regret and slow greyness that creep into my being, which I usually ascribe to SAD and am only partially correct in so doing.

I did another Brid-centered ritual tonight as well with some of the Daughters of the Flame, and that too settled some of the murky misdirected emotion within me. Why can’t I remember that doing rit is good for me? Ritual feeds something in my soul that craves a semi-formal structure in which to meet my perception of the Divine. It’s easy, it’s direct, and it works. Maybe it’s that it all seems too simple, and my intellectual mind waves it away as such. Whatever the reason, I know better, and I’ve fallen out of the habit because of the boy and the family schedule. With some time off now that the book is finished, I can turn my attention to reconstructing a healthier spiritual pattern again as I rediscover who I am and what my life is, for perhaps the first time since the boy was born.

I can play the cello again, too, for example, something that I haven’t been able to do since I started the book because I’ve either been working or watching the boy. We had our first rehearsal for the Messiah this past Wednesday, and it was good. I’ve been waiting a full two months to feel that way about an orchestra rehearsal, rather than coming home and trying to forget the experience every week because they made me feel awful, my lack of rehearsal time showing how poorly I’m keeping up with the demands the music makes of me. I played through all the new music directly after I sent off the MS, and it went a long way toward helping me not feel behind before we’d even started playing that night. The work I’ve done for band recently too has helped me remember how much I love music, and how beautiful it can be when I’m not trying too hard or too tense to let it flow.

The decks do feel cleared. I’ve been struggling through that feeling of endings and going nowhere this past month, as I do every year. With Samhain past and the new year before me, I can sense that still point I need in order to rebalance and begin again.

And so the Wheel turns….

What I Read This October

Here’s what I read this past month:

Summer of the Danes – Ellis Peters
Hannah Waters and the Daughter of Johann Sebastian Bach – Barbara Nickel
Spellbinder – Melanie Rawn
The Limits of Enchantment– Graham Joyce
Forest Mage – Robin Hobb
Watchers of Time – Charles Todd
The Fourth Bear – Jasper Fforde
Uniform Justice – Donna Leon
Poison Study – Maria V. Snyder
Childbirth Wisdom from the World’s Oldest Societies– Judith Goldsmith
The Manner Born: Birth Rites in Cross-Cultural Perspective – ed. Lauren Dundes
Charlotte Sometimes – Penelope Farmer (reread)
Stradivarius: Five Violins, One Cello, and a Genius – Toby Faber

Mostly good. I’m still dragging on the final chapters of Poison Study, though. I just can’t settle into it. It’s interesting, just not as engaging as I was hoping it would be.